Music Eyes forward Conor Oberst returns to his most high-profile project, Bright Eyes. With an album and a Glasgow show part of the plan, Ryan Drever welcomes him back
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✽✽ HITLIST
THE BEST ROCK, POP, JAZZ & FOLK
✽✽ Sound Thought The Arches teams up with the University of Glasgow’s postgrad music course for a new festival, featuring round- table discussions, workshops and performances of fresh compositions. The Arches, Glasgow, Thu 3- –Sat 5 Feb. (Rock & Pop) ✽✽ Let’s Get Lyrical A month of exhibitions, gigs, film screenings and more – all in celebration of our most cherished song lyrics. Various venues, Glasgow, until Mon 28 Feb. (Rock & Pop) ✽✽ Crystal Castles They made The List’s top five gigs of 2010, and Alice Glass and Ethan Kath (above) return, this time as headliners on the NME tour. 02 Academy, Glasgow, Thu 3 Feb. (Rock & Pop) ✽✽ Esben and the Witch Creepy goth-pop, with occasional echoes of The xx. They’ve got a new video for ‘Warpath’ out now too. Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh, Fri 4 Feb. (Rock & Pop) ✽✽ Bright Eyes See left. Oran Mor, Glasgow, Tue 8 Feb. (Rock & Pop) ✽✽ D/R/U/G/S Pulsing, blissful, synthy electro from the Manc duo, playing the third Knock Knock night. See Clubs, page 40. Glasgow School of Art, Wed 9 Feb. (Rock & Pop) ✽✽ James Yorkston The Fife singer-songwriter has just written a book about his alcohol and Scrabble-related adventures on tour – It’s Lovely To Be Here comes out on Thu 3 Feb (the Domino Press) – so will anything anecdote-worthy happen at this show? Old St Paul’s Church Hall, Edinburgh, Fri 11 Feb. (Rock & Pop) ✽✽ Gruff Rhys The talented Welsh oddball (who is also in Super Furry Animals) spends a hell of a lot of time in hotels, apparently. Oran Mor, Glasgow, Tue 15 Feb. (Rock & Pop) 3–17 Feb 2011 THE LIST 63
E ven if you’ve never warmed to the shaky timbre of Conor Oberst’s emotionally wrought vocals, related to his intensely personal lyrics or felt a kinship with the causes he so vehemently supports with his music, there is one thing you could never accuse the man of – and that’s laziness.
Since the age of around 13, the native of Omaha, Nebraska, along with the help of a close-knit sleeper cell of incredibly talented artists and musicians centering on Saddle Creek Records, has been writing, recording, performing and releasing in numerous bands and projects. He has gone from the original incarnation of electronic troupe The Faint to the ramshackle punk of Desaparecidos, until the present day when, as he tiptoes into his 30s, he is already doing his best to embrace his past glories as well as make heady progress. Best known for his work under the name Bright Eyes, Oberst makes music celebrated for its cathartic, often self-deprecating lyrical approach, combined with an ingenuity in recreating and twisting elements of more traditional folk and country. Early albums such as Letting Off The Happiness and Fevers and Mirrors revelled in their own misery, coupled with a rough- and-ready production style, and laid the foundations for some of his more cohesive yet experimental bouts of creativity and, subsequently, enormous popularity. In stark contrast to the James Blunts and Jack Johnsons of the world, Bright Eyes – steadily adding hired hands and helpers along the way – consistently offered a varied palette and ultimately more substance to what could have easily been written off as another singer-songwriter. After turning heads with the sprawling Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil Keep Your Ear to the Ground in 2002, Bright Eyes graduated
from cult figure to MTV mainstay three years later thanks to the double release of the acoustic/country- driven I’m Wide Awake it’s Morning and not-so- acoustic Digital Ash in a Digital Urn, spawning ‘hits’ and now well-worn favourites such as ‘First Day of my Life’, ‘Goldmine Gutted’ and the sparsely beautiful, ‘Lua’.
In 2007, Oberst put the band on ice, taking the opportunity to spread his creative wings and explore different paths. After turning his hand briefly to ‘solo’ work – somewhat confusingly lashing together ‘The Mystic Valley Band’ as support – he was drafted in alongside M Ward, My Morning Jacket’s angelic crooner Jim James and frequent collaborator and Saddle Creek all-star Mike Mogis to form Monsters of Folk, a folk ‘supegroup’ of sorts, culminating in a well- received debut of the same name. As well constructed as these efforts were, anyone that has spent the past three years tearfully staring at their copy of Lifted. . . wondering where the good times have gone would have been pleased to hear of Bright Eyes’ reemergence late last year. Promising a bolder albeit less folk-orientated approach, the new album, The People’s Key, is coupled with the band’s first UK appearances in four years, including a sold-out Scottish stint at Oran Mor. On the strength of first single ‘Shell Games’ alone, this latest offering, as different and left-field as it may be, is undoubtedly Bright Eyes at their most potent.
Unmissable? We think so. Bright Eyes, Oran Mor, Glasgow, Tue 8 Feb. The People’s Key (Saddle Creek) is released on Mon 14 Feb. See review, page 66. For details of how to win a pair of tickets, see page 69.
‘HE COULD HAVE BEEN WRITTEN
OFF AS ANOTHER
SINGER- SONGWRITER’